Gulf Coast fishermen report continued problems in the water…

GCCF Policy

Rocky Kirstner, writing on his blog for the NRDC, speaks to several fishermen who highlight the ongoing problems in the Gulf:

The all important white shrimp season opened a week ago and some fishermen say it too will be a disaster, perhaps worse than the brown shrimp season that ended in July and was a disappointment to many. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen by a long shot,” says Grand Isle’s Dean Blanchard, once the largest shrimp buyer on the coast. “The white shrimp are born right here near the coast. They can’t make it through this oil. These are born to die conditions.”

Blanchard says fishermen continue to report dead dolphins in the area on a daily basis, something he says was unheard of in previous years. And on Thursday he took a trip to some oyster beds in nearby Barataria Bay that had been seeded with oyster spat to try to encourage them to come back to life. Instead they found death and devastation. “Everything was dead and the cages were full of oil. No one down here is being held accountable.”

Dean Blanchard, like many along the Gulf, also continue to have problems being compensated for the damages they have suffered from BP’s oil spill, despite all those promises from BP:

Dean Blanchard says he has given up on getting help from BP or the government. He says his business lost at least $6 million due to impacts of the BP blowout, yet BP has paid him just $1 million so far. He’s had to lay off more than half of his employees and now is wondering if he just may have to shut down altogether. “BP has turned by life upside down, and I don’t know what’s coming next. I may have to close down and go into the oil business because that seems to be the only thing left.”

And through it all, Feinberg maintains his actions with the GCCF have been “vindicated,” that the Gulf is heading towards a fast recovery, that if people, including most of those in the seafood industry, don’t raise revenues by 5% each quarter, their interim payments will be cut back and hey, final payments could be reduced in the future as well.

Feinberg maintains all will be well in the Gulf by 2013.

He continues to condition final payments upon claimants waiving their rights to sue BP, the no-sue clause, thus rendering said claimants ineligible for any further compensation from BP on an unknown future.

In fact, despite the troubles fishermen are reporting with their catches, Feinberg shrugs his shoulders and tightens up GCCF interim claims saying that since all federal and most state fishing grounds have been reopened this shows improvement in the seafood industry’s ability to get back to a way of life stolen from them by BP. He also reports an increase in catches of shrimp in the first few months of 2011…a brown shrimp season many shrimpers call a disaster.

Hey Ken?

The Gulf of Mexico is still in trouble and you are not protecting claimants, you are protecting BP, and along with BP you are morally culpable.